The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution - Hardcover

Morris, Charles R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586488287 ISBN 13: 9781586488284

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2012

Synopsis

In the thirty years after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in world history. That is a well-known period in history, when titans like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan walked the earth.

But as Charles R. Morris shows us, the platform for that spectacular growth spurt was built in the first half of the century. By the 1820s, America was already the world’s most productive manufacturer, and the most intensely commercialized society in history. The War of 1812 jumpstarted the great New England cotton mills, the iron centers in Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and the forges around the Great Lakes. In the decade after the War, the Midwest was opened by entrepreneurs. In this beautifully illustrated book, Morris paints a vivid panorama of a new nation buzzing with the work of creation. He also points out the parallels and differences in the nineteenth century American/British standoff and that between China and America today.

About this title

About the Author

Charles R. Morris has written twelve books, including The Coming Global Boom, a New York Times Notable Book of 1990; The Tycoons, a Barron's Best Book of 2005; and The Trillion Dollar Meltdown, winner of the Gerald Loeb Award and a New York Times Bestseller. A lawyer and former banker, Mr. Morris’s articles and reviews have appeared in many publications including the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Review

An unprecedented 3.9 percent average annual rate of economic growth sustained for more than a century propelled the U.S. to global economic leadership. Morris chronicles the remarkable story behind the remarkable number Morris concludes with a provocative comparison of the nineteenth-century duel pitting the U.S. against Great Britain and today's rivalry between China and the U.S. Economic history freighted with social and political relevance.”

USA Today Morris obviously possesses an inquiring mind . [He] explicates developments skillfully.”

PublishersWeekly.com Morris's analysis shines brightest in the final chapter as he compares the United States' past economic growth with the current hyper-expansion of China. Only then, by examining the hurdles China faces in its ascendance to economic superpower, does Morris show how truly innovative the transformation of America was and why it will be impossible to repeat in the future.”

Tyler Cowen, New York Times Magazine, One-Page Magazine The early 19th century as a pep talk for today.”

John Steele Gordon, Wall Street Journal

A Daily Beast Favorite Book of the Year

A Wall Street Journal Best Business Book of the Year

Kirkus
The author is at his best when he focuses on the people behind the technology . Morris' research is thorough . Ambitious.”

Paul Steiger, editor-in-chief of ProPublica and former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal
Charles Morris, fast becoming our leading narrative historian of economic success and scandals, tells how nineteenth-century America outproduced, outmarketed,  outdistributed and stole technology from the former No. 1 power, Great Britain, to displace it on the world stage. The fascinating tale also holds crucial lessons for Americans as China races to unseat the U.S. as the world leader.”

Charles H. Ferguson, director of Inside Job and author of Predator Nation                         
A fascinating book that pulls together the strands of American development into a sweeping and vivid account of the nation's rise to economic preeminence. Charles Morris has a special gift for making complicated subjects accessible and even entertaining.”

Booklist

[A]n illuminating narrative that shows, among much else, what happened when Yankee ingenuity met the Industrial Revolution . Post-Civil War industrialization had an important and largely overlooked predecessor in the first decades of the 19th century. It is a story well worth telling, and Mr. Morris tells it well . The author's in-text illustrations and diagrams are very helpful in showing the cleverness and ingenuity of mechanisms designed by such forgotten giants as the clockmaker Eli Terry, the gun maker Thomas Blanchard and the steam-engine designer George H. Corliss. Mr. Morris's deft character sketches bring them to life as well. The steam engine powered the steamboat and the railroad, which knitted the country together into one huge common market, allowing industrial economies of scale that would, in the later 19th century, astonish the world .”

Civil Engineering In an elegantly written assessment of how the current situation is like and unlike its 19th-century analogue, Morris flashes the knowledge and insight that landed him on the Council on Foreign Relations and crafts an effective coda for his paean to American innovation.”

Michael Lind,­ New York Times Book Review

Edition details

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1586488287
• ISBN 13: 9781586488284
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384